FOUND: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Read online

  FOUND

  A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel

  By Scarlet Korin

  Copyright © Scarlet Korin

  Amazon Exclusive Edition.

  All rights reserved.

  Disclaimer

  Please note: This novel is a work of fiction. All names, characters, dialogue, businesses, locations and events are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Warning: This book contains adult themes and is intended for readers 18 years and older. Please do not buy if sexual situations, violence, drugs and explicit language offends you.

  Author's Note:

  Thank you for reading this novel. If you enjoy it, please make sure to let others know by leaving a review.

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  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to one very special person.

  Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  ~ Chapter One ~

  The past...

  You know, it's funny how you remember some things. They can be insignificant or trivial, but whenever you smell a certain scent or look at something from a particular angle your mind is instantly taken back to a moment. Strange, isn't it? For me it's the glare of the sun reflecting off chrome...

  I'm twelve, close to thirteen, with hair down to my ass and wearing a pink dress with flowers my grandmother made for me last Christmas. I'm at home. It's a typical Californian summertime evening, red clouds with the sun disappearing into the night. I was playing out all afternoon and barely able to move. These were the kind of days every kid round here knew during the holidays. With an ice cold lemonade in my hand, my skin's burnt warm and the smell of grass is on my fingertips. My parents and me sit around the TV with dinner digesting in our stomachs and without a care in the world.

  Then, in an instant, that's all broken...

  The sound of raised voices shatters through the window and I rush up to see what's happening. The chaos is coming from the Vendrell's opposite. Four police cars are parked outside with deputies demanding that Mr Vendrell gets his ass outside. They scream something about his club, the Midnight Sinners, but I can't make out much from across the road. Slowly, like he doesn't have a care in the world, he steps out and stares the cops down. Their hands automatically reach for their guns. He stands on his porch, wearing leather and denim from head to toe, arms crossed and waiting for action.

  Suddenly I feel my mom's hand on my shoulder trying to pull me back. 'Cassie come away', she tells me. 'You shouldn't be seeing this. We always knew that man was bad people'. I shake her off with my grip tightening on the window pane. 'I knew he'd bring trouble to these parts', my father begins. 'Bikers always do'.

  Out of the Vendrell door steps Boyd, my friend, with more than a passing resemblance to his dad and with hair more golden than the setting sun overhead. Taking his position behind his father he stands bolder than any of the policemen. But, that's him.

  'To think', my dad added, 'We've been letting her play with his boy all these years. Just think of the kind of trouble he could have got her into one day. Knocked up, on drugs, anything! You can expect anything when a kid's got a father like that. Ain't that right?' With each passing syllable his words screamed out their disdain. Mom stroked my back protectively. 'Not in front of her. She doesn't need to hear you talk like that about her friend.'

  But he had become more than a friend...

  My chest tightened. Listening to the damning words around me and seeing the police moving in outside was all too much.

  Suddenly a frenzy of action erupted outside. Mr Vendrell shouted something to the cops. A warning, maybe. Then he told hollered at Boyd to get inside and out of trouble.

  In a pack they charged him, one swinging a baton straight to his side and bringing him down in a shot. The others, like hyenas, pounced on him and wrestled him to the ground. Above him the one who struck leered down self-satisfied while locking handcuffs brutally around his tattooed wrists.

  “Dad!” Boyd screamed before charging forward and reigning down countless blows into the back of one of the cops, but, at his age and against adult lawmen, his arms barely make a dent. Two rapidly shoved him against the side of his house as Mr Vendrell cried out in agony of seeing his son hurt.

  I wanted to be sick.

  Then, out of nowhere, they appeared...

  It was the sound I first felt. The vibration which ran through my stomach and pulsed through my veins until all the hairs on the back of my neck stood upright. Their engines howled like nothing I had experienced before.

  Next came the light, bouncing off the chrome of their bikes and the reflective glass of their helmets. It reflected the sun and out street was hit with a dozen mini sunsets.

  Each motorcycle tore up our suburban street. Like four avenging angels they arrived. Four huge bikers rode up to Boyd's place, dismounted and marched towards the cops.

  Daddy yelled angrily next to me, 'What the Hell? They can't! Is that pussy police force backing down? They can't be intimidated like that! If they gotta arrest him, they better arrest him! This town's going to hell. Goddamn cowards! If you're going to arrest him, do it!'

  They looked ten times bigger than the deputies, and I'm sure the latter thought that too considering how quickly they dragged Mr Vendrell to his feet and made with the keys. In a shot, without a word being spoken, the cuffs were unlocked and he was free to go. Boyd too was brushed down and left alone. The scared rats ran straight for their patrol cars with sirens blaring as they beat a hasty retreat.

  'Goddamn it! The police in this town. They need to shape up. If they can't get bikers under control then what's next?' Father grumbled before sealing his place with a swig of beer back in front of the television.

  Though my teared up and terrified eyes couldn't part from the scene before me.

  Heading straight back for their Harleys the bikers mounted their steel steeds and waited silently. They talked among themselves, though I couldn't make out what they said. Mr Vendrell walked back towards an edgy Boyd – who, strong as he always was, must have been scared half to death – and began explaining things. He ruffled his son's hair before they both ran into the house.

  The scene appeared over and I quickly planned how to convince my parents about letting me break my grounding to go find out what was going on.

  But, just as I was about to sit down, the metal of the garage door crashed open and Mr Vendrell pushed his own bike out. At the end of the yard he turned back and shouted, 'Boyd! Get your ass out here with that bag. We need to get out!'

  Boyd ran out of the house in a bolt of lightning carrying a big green army duffle bag under his arm. He jumped onto his daddy's Harley, with the loaded bag behind him, and with a thunder the bike was kick started and all five engine
s prepared to roar down out street.

  Yet next came the moment I'll remember forever...

  With bikes pausing in the street before me ready to turn left and out, Boyd turned and stared straight at me. His intense blue eyes looked at me like no one has before or since. They seared into me in a way that I can even recall today. He had the most gorgeous and emotive of eyes...

  At that moment the black leather of one of the bikers cut in front of us. I blinked and when I opened my eyes he was gone. They were speeding down our little street. A huge cloud of exhaust following the tremor of the bikes.

  That evening I cried out a bucketful of tears and mom could do nothing to console me. I was a kid, barely a teenager and without a lick of sense, but I knew enough that he was gone for good and I would never see him again. I could feel it in my bones, like something inside had disappeared instantaneously. Since before I could remember we had been inseparable in our quiet town of Midnight and deep down inside I understood that was this the last time I would ever see Boyd.

  Boyd – my first love...

  Strange isn't it? How you remember some things.

  ~ Chapter Two ~

  The present...

  “Girl, you were raised round here? Looks like a backwards-ass shit-hole to me. Now I see why you moved onto bigger and better things.” Jerome, my boyfriend, sat at the wheel with one hand dangling out of the window and his foot on the accelerator pushing his Escalade beyond the speed limit. He loved that car more than the low price he got it for.

  “Yeah...”

  I could have screamed. Better things? Better things like you? You're the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

  “You quiet tonight, bitch. Pass me a smoke.”

  I picked up the cigarettes and wanted to cram the packet down his rotten throat for talking to me like that. But I couldn't. Not any more. Over the years he has broken all the fight out of me and I wouldn't dare raise my voice to him anymore. My ribs are still sore from the beating he gave me for disagreeing with him last week. Like the dutiful girlfriend he wanted, I placed a smoke between his teeth.

  “You going to light it, or do I have to do everything round here?” Jerome barked out.

  My hands instantly moved and I obeyed his command. There's no point struggling with him. I can only take his side.

  He took a deep drag, “Midnight? What a strange name for a town. Spooky and shit.”

  “Yeah...”

  Midnight was the town I grew up in. That is, it was until my parents were killed by a drunk driver. Then I was shipped out West to my bitch of an Aunt's place and everything changed for the worse. This town is tiny compared to the big city I've called home since I was thirteen, though it never truly leaves my thoughts. I often think back to my childhood here in the Central Valley; those long endless days where it always felt like summer. The best of times.

  Jerome drove on down dusty roads and towards the central part of town. The stores, the atmosphere, the smells; it looked like the past twenty years went by without affecting this town one big. Though, I'm more than this town these days. The life I've led has seen to that.

  “Your folks still live round here, baby?”

  My cheek sunk into the arm I rested on the window's edge. “No... They're long gone.”

  “That's too bad. You could have shown off your man,” he confidently told me with a smile that revealed his gold teeth. Sharp, ugly teeth that gripped the smoke.

  Of course, Jerome knows next to nothing of my past. After a while with him I stopped letting him get any nearer. We might have been together since he picked me up stripping seven years ago, though after he gave me my first black eye I became a closed book to him. Opening up to him didn't seem worth it from then on.

  When we first met I thought he was hot shit. What else would a nineteen year old who was new to the big San Francisco lights think of someone like him? Always dressed smart, expensive cars and gold chains as thick as my wrist.

  I remember the night I first met him. Jerome walked into the Crazy House, the club I stripped at, like he owned the place. The bouncers shook his unsmiling hand and they walked him to my manager who ensured he was given the best table in the club. Women reacted to him the same. All the girls who worked with me were all over him. Shooting seductive bedroom eyes from every angle of the club.

  Jerome seemed bigger than life with the attitude, clothes and most importantly money that came with it. It was like having a celebrity fall into the world of us normal people. At least, that's what you think when you don't know any better.

  'Come here girl', was the first line he used on me and I was instantly smitten. He took a bankroll bigger than my fist out of his pocket and tossed money down like it was worthless. He paid for dances and tipped heavily – all for me.

  I couldn't believe he was interested in me. Why would he chose me over all the other girls here? I thought. He could have any of the sexy women in here. I was such an innocent girl then. In no way did I have the experience, style and street smarts of all the other strippers working around me.

  Then he pulled me into his lap and from that moment on I was his. He filled my ears with tales of the beauty I could not see inside of myself and of the life I could have. He told me I was his woman. He said the world was a roller coaster with pitfalls around every bend, but he promised we would both see it through. 'We're winners and we'll see it through to the end. Cassie, there's a pot of gold with our name on it. I'm going to take you from this club and you'll be a princess in a palace one day. Believe me baby.'

  I believed him. Oh god how I regret believing him...

  For the first eighteen months our relationship was sunshine and rainbows. Each day an intoxicating adventure of new sights, new sounds and new feelings. My heart was his and I considered myself blessed. He took me from the club, that shallow neon-lit way of life, and resurrected me into a new world.

  Though soon the cracks began appearing. Even as a girl I should have seen the red flags and fled, but, high on love, I ignored them.

  Jerome's a drug dealer. One of the biggest in our city. The sort of guy you'd never take home to mom and pop. Nevertheless, young and dumb, I sat on his lap, his pretty blond pet, as he cut deals with gangsters and threatened anyone stupid enough to defy him. He was like the king of the underworld holding court with me as his queen. To a girl who has seen nothing of the world that life and the drama that follows it is glamorous and addictive. I loved every second. No matter how dangerous it got.

  But by the third year together our relationship began falling apart at the seams. We'd got too close, spent too much time together and I knew Jerome better than any other person on this planet. Anyone healthy would consider that a good thing; couples should know each other as well as themselves. It's how people mature and grow together.

  Yet, Jerome isn't healthy.

  You see, he might have power, he might have money, he might have men working for him; but none of that mattered because he let me get near enough to see the real him. And up close I realized that the strong mask he wore when facing the world was a front. Behind it there was no substance. Just a man who needs to convince everyone he's a somebody and reacts with violence whenever things do not go his way.

  Whenever he came home too drunk or strung out and I knew he'd been cheating on me, he would never admit the truth. He called me a fool and let his fists fly if I protested further. I embraced each punch and told myself that all of this was my doing. I convinced myself that whatever happened was my own fault. That it's due to me not being the perfect girlfriend. From day one I had been faithful to him, but none of that mattered. I believed he cheated because I wasn't enough. My mind twisted it and I took his brutality as a sign of his love. I figured if someone is willing to hit you, they must have feelings for you. As sick as it sounds, I learned to love it. That is, until it became too much to bear and I settled into a relationship I couldn't comprehend escaping.

  And things haven't been any better recently. The government's e
ternal war on drugs has dried up business in the city and his crew has been falling apart. Half rotting in prison, the other half running south of the border. He wouldn't dare to admit it, but we're struggling. Right now he's not making anything worthwhile outside of running drugs to the dying black gangs who are being outmaneuvered by the Mexicans at every turn. That's why we're back out in the Valley to where I grew up. A contact has offered to cut him in on a deal. Jerome says it will make him a lot of money.

  “You know girl, I got a good feeling about this one. You know what we can do with the money? When this deal goes through I'm going to make it rain for you...”

  I sighed. He'd used that line on me a million times before. Though they're only words. Words that usually come before the sting of a fist. By make it rain he means he'll have enough to let the money flow. Although, to me it has a completely different meaning. Jerome has made it rain – he's soaked my life through.

  With a jolt his fist connected with the steering wheel and I was broken out of daydreaming. “Now why the fuck are you being cold with me bitch? You don't fucking appreciate me anymore. I tell you that. How can you treat me this way?”

  I turned to him expressionless. “I'm tired, that's all. Don't worry. I guess I'm thinking about the past. Coming home... Seeing this place. You know how it is...”

  But he completely ignored what I was saying. “Bitch!” Spoken with a shout as he wheeled left down a small road off the main road and let his rage fly. “Don't you tell me about worrying. I'm as cool as ice. Always am...”